Basic Advertising Techniques
Writing for Business
Advertising, sales, and marketing all use creative writing and commercial art to sell products. For those of you business minded, here's a little run down of various advertising techniques that businesses use to sell their products:
Emotion: appealing to the basic triumvirate of Rhetoric strategies: Ethos, Pathos, and Logos, pathos is perhaps the strongest when dealing with buying/selling. If an advertiser can strike an emotional cord with his/her audience, purchasing is more likely.
Benefit: showing that buying the product has a personal or cultural benefit or pragmatic use.
Problem / Solution: the standard or classic set up for business. When a potential customer has a problem, it can be solved by the purchasing of the product in question.
Dramatic conflict: Showing two or more forces in competition or conflict appeals to our sense of drama. It helps create subconscious (and conscious) excitement about the product. In business we might call this creating a buzz.
Sex: sex sells. It grabs our attention and as healthy human beings, can be pleasing to watch or consider.
Interesting character: The gecko from Geico is a good example. Any character that is used consistently as a "character" allows for the product to last in the minds of buyers because a story unfolds.
Personification: Hard to show or abstract items can be personified to make a sale. From happy scrubbing bubbles to an animated bear selecting the softest toilet paper, making objects or animals more human appeals to the mind and imagination.
Exaggeration: hyperbole for the sake of describing or pushing a particular point.
Demographic positioning: certain times of day, certain hegemonic groups, certain cultural icons or symbols can be used to target a specific audience.
Symbolic expressions: this type of ad technique grabs our attention by being avant garde or artistic. CAREFUL: sometimes it is difficult to figure out what the ad is actually promoting.
Employees as brand ambassadors: why hire actors when employees (who must be trusted because they are just like you and me) are used to push a product.
Direct response offers: This technique goes like this: "here's what you can get, here's how to get it, and this is why you should buy it." Usually, the ad is making a special offer and the ad is talking directly to the viewer.
Reasons why: appealing to a person's logos (or logical, rationale human mind) this kind of ad explains why you need to purchase this product.
Visual stories: often used in magazines, these are the pictures and ads that tell a story without words. Usually combined with other techniques like symbolic expressions, demographic positioning, sex, problem-solution, etc.
Testimonials: don't believe the company, believe the people who supposedly bought the product and are pleased with it.
HOMEWORK: Read Jennifer Government. So far in your reading, choose one character and explain in a paragraph how this character is using marketing, advertising, or sales techniques in the book. What kind of problems does the character's business methods cause to the plot in the book. This response is due next class.
ALSO: please watch a few minutes of TV or pay attention to the ads in a magazine or newspaper. Watch the commercials and choose one to examine closely. What is the product being promoted? What technique is the ad writer using to sell the product? And what is your personal reaction to the ad? Write a few notes. Be prepared to discuss this in class Tuesday.
Advertising, sales, and marketing all use creative writing and commercial art to sell products. For those of you business minded, here's a little run down of various advertising techniques that businesses use to sell their products:
Emotion: appealing to the basic triumvirate of Rhetoric strategies: Ethos, Pathos, and Logos, pathos is perhaps the strongest when dealing with buying/selling. If an advertiser can strike an emotional cord with his/her audience, purchasing is more likely.
Benefit: showing that buying the product has a personal or cultural benefit or pragmatic use.
Problem / Solution: the standard or classic set up for business. When a potential customer has a problem, it can be solved by the purchasing of the product in question.
Dramatic conflict: Showing two or more forces in competition or conflict appeals to our sense of drama. It helps create subconscious (and conscious) excitement about the product. In business we might call this creating a buzz.
Sex: sex sells. It grabs our attention and as healthy human beings, can be pleasing to watch or consider.
Interesting character: The gecko from Geico is a good example. Any character that is used consistently as a "character" allows for the product to last in the minds of buyers because a story unfolds.
Personification: Hard to show or abstract items can be personified to make a sale. From happy scrubbing bubbles to an animated bear selecting the softest toilet paper, making objects or animals more human appeals to the mind and imagination.
Exaggeration: hyperbole for the sake of describing or pushing a particular point.
Demographic positioning: certain times of day, certain hegemonic groups, certain cultural icons or symbols can be used to target a specific audience.
Symbolic expressions: this type of ad technique grabs our attention by being avant garde or artistic. CAREFUL: sometimes it is difficult to figure out what the ad is actually promoting.
Employees as brand ambassadors: why hire actors when employees (who must be trusted because they are just like you and me) are used to push a product.
Direct response offers: This technique goes like this: "here's what you can get, here's how to get it, and this is why you should buy it." Usually, the ad is making a special offer and the ad is talking directly to the viewer.
Reasons why: appealing to a person's logos (or logical, rationale human mind) this kind of ad explains why you need to purchase this product.
Visual stories: often used in magazines, these are the pictures and ads that tell a story without words. Usually combined with other techniques like symbolic expressions, demographic positioning, sex, problem-solution, etc.
Testimonials: don't believe the company, believe the people who supposedly bought the product and are pleased with it.
HOMEWORK: Read Jennifer Government. So far in your reading, choose one character and explain in a paragraph how this character is using marketing, advertising, or sales techniques in the book. What kind of problems does the character's business methods cause to the plot in the book. This response is due next class.
ALSO: please watch a few minutes of TV or pay attention to the ads in a magazine or newspaper. Watch the commercials and choose one to examine closely. What is the product being promoted? What technique is the ad writer using to sell the product? And what is your personal reaction to the ad? Write a few notes. Be prepared to discuss this in class Tuesday.
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